page_title: Governorate of the Banda Islands
section_title: Massacre of the Bandanese
hierarchical_section_title: Governorate of the Banda Islands / History / Massacre of the Bandanese
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Jan Pieterszoon Coen (1587-1629)
context_page_description: The Banda Islands were a governorate of the Dutch East India Company. The governorate comprised Banda Neira, Banda Besar, Pulau Ai, Run, Banda Api, and some smaller islands.
  The Banda Islands were the centre of nutmeg production.
context_section_description: Newly appointed VOC governor-general Jan Pieterszoon Coen set about enforcing Dutch monopoly over the Banda's spice trade. In 1621 well-armed soldiers were landed on Bandaneira Island and within a few days they had also occupied neighbouring and larger Lontar. The orang kaya were forced at gunpoint to sign an unfeasibly arduous treaty, one that was in fact impossible to keep, thus providing Coen an excuse to use superior Dutch force against the Bandanese. The Dutch quickly noted a number of alleged violations of the new treaty, in response to which Coen launched a punitive massacre. Japanese mercenaries were hired to deal with the orang kaya, forty of whom were beheaded with their heads impaled and displayed on bamboo spears.
  The population of the Banda Islands prior to Dutch conquest is generally estimated to have been around 13,000-15,000 people, some of whom were Malay and Javanese traders, as well as Chinese and Arabs. The actual numbers of Bandanese who were killed, forcibly expelled or fled the islands in 1621 remain uncertain. But readings of historical sources suggest around one thousand Bandanese likely survived in the islands, and were spread throughout the nutmeg groves as forced labourers. The Dutch subsequently re-settled the islands with imported slaves, convicts and indentured labourers (to work the nutmeg plantations), as well as immigrants from elsewhere in Indonesia. Most survivors fled as refugees to the islands of their trading partners, in particular Keffing and Guli Guli in the Seram Laut chain and Kei Besar. Shipments of surviving Bandanese were also sent to Batavia (Jakarta) to work as slaves in developing the city and its fortress. Some 530 of these individuals were later returned to the islands because of their much-needed expertise in nutmeg cultivation (something sorely lacking among newly arrived Dutch settlers).
  Whereas up until this point the Dutch presence had been simply as traders, that was sometimes treaty-based, the Banda conquest marked the start of the first overt colonial rule in Indonesia albeit under the auspices of the VOC.
caption: Jan Pieterszoon Coen ordered the massacre of the Bandanese.
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